It sounds like a photographer’s worst nightmare: the light of the flashbulb causes the subject of the photo to burst into flames. But that’s exactly what happened recently when researchers snapped a picture of some single-walled carbon nanotubes, tiny cylinders of pure carbon. The findings, described in a report published in the current issue of the journal Science, suggest that the minute straws could be used as triggering devices or for remote light-induced ignition.
The discovery was ma
The scientists from I.P. Pavlov Institute of Physiology, Russian Academy of Sciences, have investigated the intellectual abilities of chimpanzees in comparison with the children from a nursery school in Koltushy near St. Petersburg. They asked both to build the pyramids of cubes of different size. The children with the retention of speech development aged from 2 to 7 and two chimpanzees, female (aged 7) and male (aged 11) ones, took part in the experiment. The children and the apes were shown a pyra
Researchers at the University of Warwick’s Warwick Process Technology Group have devised a process that turns wet waste from sewage farms and paper mills into a source of power.
University of Warwick researcher Dr Ashok Bhattacharya and his team are part of a Europe wide consortium that have cracked the problem of how to extract very pure levels of hydrogen from wet bio-matter, such as sewage or paper mill waste. This very pure hydrogen can then be used in “fuel cells” to power homes, factor
Is it possible to make components out of organic polymers (plastics) whose structure is such that severed nerves can grow right into them and connect with electrodes in a prosthetic hand, for example? This is one of the research fields for Tobias Nyberg at the Section for Biomolecular and Organic Electronics at Linköping University, Sweden.
Part of Tobias Nyberg’s dissertation is based on collaboration with cell biologist Helena Jerregård. Her task is to find ways to get tangled nerves to s
A team including researchers at the Total Defense Research Institute, NBC Defense, in Umeå, Sweden, and the Department of Molecular Biology, Umeå University, are publishing in this week’s issue of Science new findings that show that the protein Ymt is of crucial importance for the capacity of the plague bacterium to survive and spread the plague via flea vectors. Professor Åke Forsberg and visiting researcher Dr. Peter Cherepanov are studying the properties that enable the plague bacterium Yersinia
The pressure on the environment of building during the past 5000 years can be observed clearly from the air. In a recent lecture at the Society of Chemical Industry (SCI), aerial photographer and concrete specialist Christopher Stanley illustrated the evolution of construction and its lasting impact, from stone circles to skyscrapers.
Stanley’s lecture ‘Managing the environment: a perspective from land, air and sea’ followed the presentation of the 2002 SCI Environment Medal in recognition o
Spin-off company offers a tiny solution for a big problem. The first sign of spoilage in many food products is the formation of free radicals, which reduces the shelf-life and…
MPI-M researchers and their partner institutions are currently performing atmospheric measurements over the equatorial Atlantic with eight coordinated measurement campaigns. They want to find out what controls the structure of…
Atomic clocks have been used for decades – but now, even greater precision has become possible: TU Wien (Vienna) and JILA/NIST are presenting the w For many years, scientists all…
The sensor could serve as a low-cost and efficient tool for early detection of neurological disorders and conditions, including Parkinson’s disease, Alzheimer’s disease and depression. Dopamine, a neurotransmitter in our…
Nuclear parasites in deep-sea mussels. Researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Marine Microbiology reveal how a bacterial parasite thrives inside the nuclei of deep-sea mussels. Most animals live in…
Bonn researchers find causative mutations in the keratin 31 gene for the dominantly-inherited form of monilethrix – From infancy and usually for life, some families suffer from broken hair due…
Energy storage systems of the future must be cost-effective and sustainable. To achieve this, it is crucial that the materials used are both readily available and recyclable. A research team…
Researchers at Tohoku University have successfully increased the capacity, lifetime durability, and cost-effectiveness of a capacitor in their pursuit of a more power-efficient future. A capacitor is a device used…
Fungi have more to offer than meets the eye. Their thread-like cells, which grow extensively and out of sight underground like a network of roots, offer huge potential for producing…
A new Energy Frontier Research Center (EFRC), supported by the Department of Energy’s Office of Science and led by SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, was awarded $14.4 million over four years to advance manufacturing…
Together with 24 German research institutions and companies under the coordination of Forschungszentrum (FZ) Jülich, Fraunhofer IPMS is working on an integrated German quantum computer based on superconducting quantum chips…
Automatic image recognition to identify types of wood. The new European Deforestation Regulation (EUDR) is intended to prevent goods marketed in the EU from contributing to the spread of deforestation….